Bologna’s location, strategically sited between northern and central-southern Italy, has been both a curse and a blessing. The Bolognesi haven’t enjoyed many centuries of peace but the various powers that coveted and ruled over the centuries left behind a heady mix of culture and riches. Despite invasions, sieges and plagues, as well as devastation in World War II, Bologna has managed to emerge as one of Italy’s wealthiest and most dynamic cities. Its history goes back to a pre-Etruscan civilisation, but it is the medieval period, when a red-brick turreted town grew up around Europe’s oldest university, that truly defines the city.
Carving depicting early students at the university
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Early Settlers
As the Bronze Age merged into the Iron Age in around the 9th century BC, northern and central Italy were occupied by the Villanovian civilisation, named after a site discovered at Villanova just outside Bologna in 1859. This gave way in the 6th century to an Etruscan settlement, called Felsina, on the area where Bologna is today. The town flourished as a trading centre thanks to its link to the port of Spina on the Po Delta. It was a period of peace and prosperity and by the 8th century the Etruscans were dominating the entire region. Displays in Bologna’s Archaeological Museum, including grave goods, exquisite statuettes and jewellery, give an insight into the affluence and sophistication of the Etruscan culture.
Bologna’s Due Torri (Two Towers)
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At the start of the 4th century Etruscan Bologna underwent radical upheaval, with successive waves of invasions by the Celts from over the Alps. The tribes occupied large stretches of Italy, north of the Apennines and the Marches region. It was one of these tribes, the Boii, which gave the name Bononia to the settlement when it came under Roman control in 189BC.
By this time the Romans had conquered Cisalpine Gaul and set up colonies in the fertile Po Plain. They had built the Via Flaminia, stretching from the Adriatic coast over the Apennines to Rome, and in 187BC completed the long straight Via Aemilia (Emilia), running from Rimini on the east coast to Piacenza, through their newly conquered territories. This established Bononia as a key centre, linking up with the Via Flaminia and hence giving direct military and trading access from Rome. The settlement was substantially rebuilt and extended and although much of Roman Bologna is overlaid by the medieval city, Roman street plans are still visible and the route of the old Via Emilia cuts right through the centre. There are also Roman remains in the Archaeological Museum and in churches where Roman capitals were recycled and incorporated into medieval columns in surprisingly harmonious ways.
Huns, Goths and Lombards
In the early 5th century the region fell prey to barbaric invaders emigrating south, with invasions from Visigoths and Huns. Despite the incursions a strong Roman Christian culture prevailed. The close relationship between Ambrogio, the Archbishop of Milan, and the Bolognese Bishop, Petronius, who later became the patron saint of the city, enabled the construction of the first wall around the city and the addition of ‘holy protection’ in the form of four crosses set outside the walls.
Ravenna, a relatively unknown provincial town surrounded by swampland, took centre stage when Honorius, last Emperor of Rome, made it capital of the Western Roman Empire in 404. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 it came under Gothic rule, like the rest of Italy, but enjoyed a period of recovery and became a rich and powerful city, famous for its glittering early Christian and Byzantine mosaics.
The Lombard King Liutprand captured Bologna in 727. Less than 50 years later the Lombards in turn were ousted by the Franks under Charlemagne who restored the city to the papacy. The city’s most ancient churches date back to this era.
Communes and Dynastic Powers
In the 11th and 12th centuries Bologna succeeded in wresting itself from Ravenna, whose archbishops controlled the region. It was now free to enjoy the status of an independent commune – or free city state, thus ensuring considerable political and economic autonomy. The University of Bologna, which is now recognised as the oldest in Europe, was founded in 1088 and brought international renown to the city (see box). It was a period of major development too, with the creation of elegant porticoes and high-rise towers, built for wealthy families. Less evident today are the canals which served the watermills to power the textile industries, especially silk. The waterways were also used for ships carrying cargo as trade expanded. By 1200 Bologna had a population of around 50,000 and was one of the great cities of Europe.
The exquisite porticoes of Via Farini
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Bologna ‘La Dotta’ (‘The Learned’)
Medieval Bologna’s most significant event was the foundation of Europe’s first university, believed to have been in 1088. For the first 470 or so years of its existence the university had no fixed location and lectures were held in public buildings or convent halls scattered around the city. Under Pius lV the Palazzo Archiginnasio (for more information, click here) was built in the city centre in 1562 and this served as the seat of the university until 1803 when it moved permanently to its present premises on Via Zamboni. The prestige of the law school made the city a European centre of scholarship which drew the finest minds of the day. Bologna also developed one of Europe’s earliest medical schools and acquired a reputation for scientific research that survives to this day. Palazzo Poggi, the present-day seat of the university, is home to many of its faculties, the university library and a cluster of museums, including some fascinating scientific collections that were used for teaching in former times. The university remains one of the country’s finest academic institutions and boasts some of the loveliest university buildings in the country.
But as in the rest of Italy it was also a time of factional strife. The city was one of the main cities of the Lombard League (1167), a medieval alliance of North Italian communes against Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. There were constant struggles between the Guelphs, supporters of the free cities and the pope, and the pro-Holy Roman Empire Ghibellines. The Guelphs faught constantly with Ghibelline Modena and won a victory against them at the Battle of Fossalta in 1249. The son of Emperor Frederick II, known as Enzo of Sardinia, was captured and imprisoned in Bologna’s Palazzo di Re Enzo until his death in 1273.
Internal power struggles led to the decline of the communes and the rise of the region’s great family dynasties, ranging from semi-feudal lordships to fully fledged dukedoms and courts of European renown. Throughout the 15th century Bologna was governed by the mighty Bentivoglio family, who produced five successive leaders, and introduced an enlightened regime, bringing in the printing press and embarking on a building programme.
In the region as a whole, dynastic rule was elevated to a way of life, with the noble courts becoming noted centres of culture, from the Farnese dynasty in Parma to the d’Este dukes in Ferrara, and the Malatesta lords in Rimini. During the Renaissance the ducal courts, especially that of the d’Este, became cultural and artistic centres attracting the finest artists.
Pope Clement VII and Charles V arriving in Bologna for Charles’s coronation
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Centuries of papal domination
Bologna’s role as a prestigious centre of learning had helped make the city one of the richest, most important and densely populated in Europe. Such prosperity and independence presented a threat to papal power, so the city was annexed by the Papal States in 1506 when Pope Julius besieged Bologna. A year later, encouraged by the papacy, the Bolognesi sacked the monumental palace of the now fallen-from-favour Bentivoglios. Following Bologna, Parma and Piacenza were later annexed by the Papal States and the papal dynasty ended one of the most enlightened Renaissance city-states when it swallowed up Ferrara in 1598 and the remains of the d’Este dukedom transferred to Modena.
The life of Bologna as part of the Papal States was to endure for almost three centuries. When Charles V was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the pope in 1530 he chose to have the coronation in Bologna’s Basilica of San Petronio. His troops had sacked Rome three years earlier and Bologna by this stage enjoyed an importance second only to the capital of the Papal States. It was a double coronation for Charles was also crowned King of Italy in the Palazzo Pubblico (now the Palazzo Comunale). The combined event was chronicled as the ‘Triumph of Bologna’ for the pomp and splendour of the ceremonies. The following few months saw fervent construction in the city, the papacy showcasing its power and influence through symbolic triumphal arches, classical architecture and statues.
The last decades of the 16th century saw the school of Bolognese painters flourish under the Carraccis, the family of artists who challenged the affectations of Mannerism and satisfied the desire of the Counter-Reformation for a new religious art of simplicity and clarity with a direct appeal to the emotions. Guido Reni, who trained with the Carracci, became one of the greatest painters of the 17th century. But while Bologna was a major art centre and saw the rise of new churches, monasteries and palazzi, it was otherwise a period of political and intellectual stagnation, dominated by the reactionary reforms of the Counter Reformation.
Foreign Intervention
Papal rule was interrupted briefly with Napoleonic troops sweeping into Italy in 1796. Bologna, Ferrara, Mantua and Reggio Emilia formed the Cispadane Republic, later to be amalgamated in to the short-lived Cisalpine Republic with Milan as its capital. The French, who were welcomed in Bologna, made improvements to the city, such as the ring road outside the city walls and the transfer of the University from the Archiginnasio to Palazzo Poggi.
Under the Congress of Vienna in 1815, following the defeat of Napoleon, Bologna was returned to the Papal States. But real control of much of northern Italy rested with reactionary Austria whose troops garrisoned the city from 1815. Insurrections spread through Bologna, Modena and Parma, starting in 1831. Austrian rule finally came to an end when Camillo Cavour, the architect of Italian Unification, decided the only way of defeating Austria was with the support of France. In 1859 the troops of Vittorio Emanuele and Napoleon III of France defeated the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino. The following year the citizens of Bologna voted to become part of the Kingdom of Savoy, which was to become the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
World War II
The 19th century saw Bologna rehearsing its future role, as a radical socialist city in a left-leaning region within the broad ‘red belt’ of central Italy. Even so, the city flirted with Fascism during the period between the two world wars, and paid the price in 1943−5. The Emilian Apennines marked the Nazis’ Gothic Line, making Bologna a strategic target for Allied attacks. The aerial bombardments wreaked havoc on the city, destroying or severely damaging over 40 percent of the buildings in the historic centre.
The bourgeoisie and the land-owning classes succumbed to Fascism, but during the last days of the war, partisans from the area provided the fiercest resistance to Nazi occupation. The Bologna hinterland also suffered Italy’s worst Nazi atrocity against civilians. In 1944 the Marzabotto massacre of 1,830 civilians and partisans in the Apennines, south of Bologna, spurred widespread condemnation, as did the Nazi deportation of Jews from Ferrara and Bologna.
The Civil Guard, established in Bologna in 1847
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Modern Bologna
In 1945 the city elected a Communist administration and never really looked back. The administration mutated into a left-wing coalition and over the next 50 years imposed an individualistic, modern vision on the city. Bologna became one of the first cities to show that there was no contradiction between a left-wing council and capitalism with a human face. It privatised key social services and encouraged public-private partnership. A bastion of social democracy, civil rights and communal culture, the city pioneered pedestrian precincts, conservation areas, communal housing, gay rights and affordable childcare, as well as sheltered housing for the elderly and student facilities.
But the city of good governance was not without its fair share of the turbulence in Italy during the late 1960s and 1970s. Over a decade of political crime and violent clashes culminated in the ‘Bologna Massacre’ on 2nd August 1980, when a bomb attributed to a Fascist terrorist organisation ripped through a waiting room of Bologna’s Central Station leaving 85 dead and 200 wounded. A gash in the wall and the station clock, permanently fixed at 10.25am, the exact time of the explosion, commemorate the event.
Museum of Modern Art of Bologna (MAMbo)
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To the dismay of local leftists the long line of left-wing mayors was broken when a centre-right coalition won the elections in 1999, headed by Giorgio Guazzaloca, a conservative businessmen and President of the Chamber of Commerce. In 2004 the left came back to power and has kept it ever since. The last mayor, centre-left Flavio Delbono resigned after 7 months at his post following his involvement in a corruption scandal and was replaced by Virginio Merola in 2011. In recent years Bologna’s red reputation has been fading to pink with an increasingly right-wing municipal government.
Bologna has a thriving industrial sector, with emphasis on engineering, electronics, machinery and automobiles. The Fiera is one of the largest exhibition centres in Europe, hosting around 30 international events annually, with themes ranging from construction and packaging to cosmetics and fashion. Like the rest of the country Bologna has suffered from the economic downturn in recent years but continues to retain its place among the top Italian cities for quality of life, wealth and welfare.